Japanese · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "ドア" in Japanese?

Q: How do you pronounce ドア in Japanese?

ドア is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /do.a/. It means “door.” do-a, two separate beats — nothing like the single syllable of English "door."

do-a, two separate beats — nothing like the single syllable of English "door."

ドア /do.a/

doa

Two slots made of two adjacent vowels, which is exactly the configuration English fuses. The borrowing dropped the English r entirely and replaced the vowel with a two-mora sequence, so the Japanese word is longer and structurally quite different from its source.

Listen: ドア

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Sound it out

do A dental d — tongue against the upper teeth — into a stationary short o with no glide.

a A bright open vowel taking its own full beat, arriving straight off the o. There's no r anywhere in this word despite its English source.

Hear it in a sentence

このドアは重いです。

Kono doa wa omoi desu.

This door is heavy.

Listen: このドアは重いです。

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このドアは重いです pairs the loanword with 重い (o-mo-i), which also ends in a vowel sequence that must not fuse. Two words in one short sentence, both of which English intuition would compress — and both of which need their vowels articulated separately.

Where English speakers slip

Saying "door" with a Japanese accent gives one beat and an r that isn't there. Say "do" and then "a" as two distinct pulses. Learners also import the English vowel, which is much darker; Japanese o here is a pure mid-back vowel and the a that follows is bright and open.